C.B. McCullough's Blog, page 3

Imagination

“Imagination is a force that can actually manifest a reality.”
- James Cameron

Free Until Friday – “The Night Also Rises” Kindle Ebook

Science fiction with a film noir twist.

Night lasts for days on planet Jannix, and in a city full of murderers, thugs, gangsters and con artists, no man can ever be sure he’ll see another dawn. So when private investigator Jack Tarelli is called to the home of an enigmatic billionaire just hours after an unspeakable murder, he knows a long, long night has only just begun.

Led on a chase into the shadowy underbelly of a city that never wakes, the hard-nosed and uncompromising Jack will stop at nothing to track down a deadly killer whose motives are shrouded in corruption, betrayal and deceit. But as connections to Jack’s own dark and mysterious past arise, it becomes clear that this is more than a search for answers; it’s a race against time.

Fools rush in where devils fear to tread.

Get your free copy today — available until Friday 8/1/14.

Work In Progress: SIX SHOOTER — The Sequel To The Night Also Rises

My current work in progress, titled Six Shooter, is a science fiction, action/adventure novel. The story will serve as the sequel to the 2013 scifi mystery novel, The Night Also Rises, but will also be able to be enjoyed as a stand-alone novel. Look for it in the Summer of 2015.

An interplanetary manhunt. A terroristic plot. And a detective with one thing on his mind: revenge.

Read long and prosper.

C.B. McCullough

 

A Winding Stair

“All rising to a great place is by a winding stair.”
- Abraham Lincoln

Some days, the winding stair can seem grueling. The top can seem unreachable. Happiness can seem unattainable.

But notice, Lincoln did not say “a happy place”. He said, “a great place”. Personal fulfillment is secondary. A man like Lincoln—a great man, and a man of great sorrow—should remind us that happiness should never be the goal of life, but rather, greatness.

The Top 10 Most Sexist Moments in Star Trek

It’s no secret that the recent J.J. Abrams film Star Trek: Into Darkness caught a lot of flak for its representation of women.

Unfortunately, watch a little of the original 1966 television series, and you might be surprised at how shockingly sexist James T. Kirk and the crew of the Enterprise could be. Most of these moments were meant to be amusing, but for modern audiences they come off as insensitive at best and harassment at worst. So let’s boldly go where many men have unfortunately gone before. Here are the top ten most uncomfortable moments of sexist comments and chauvinistic behavior in Star Trek: The Original Series.

Don’t act like you’re not impressed.
10. The Old One-Liner

“Mr. Spock, the women on your planet are logical. That’s the only planet in the galaxy that can make that claim.”

- Captain James Tiberius Kirk

Good one, Jim. Buckle up, folks. This is going to be a bumpy ride.

9.  Season 3, Episode 1: Spock’s Brain

Spock’s Brain… Where to begin? In this particularly cringeworthy episode, Mr. Spock’s brain is mysteriously stolen, leaving him a mindless husk with the rest of the crew speculating on his fate. The big reveal? His intellect and leadership abilities have been hijacked and used to help govern an otherwise mindless and leaderless society… That just happens to be entirely female.

This one’s so rough that Leonard Nemoy has even commented on it publicly. “Frankly,” he said, “during the entire shooting of that episode, I was embarrassed—a feeling that overcame me many times during the final season of Star Trek.”

The premise behind the episode is bad enough, but throw in some scantily-clad ladies who can only speak in broken, caveman-like English, and it comes off as just plain sad. As you might expect, this gem has some incredibly campy and melodramatic dialogue, but the best lines?

Kirk: “What have you done with his brain?”

Mind-stealing woman: “Brain and brain! What is BRAIN?” 

I’m beginning to wonder, myself.

8.  How To Kiss A Woman


7.  Season 1, Episode 6: Mudd’s Women

One of the earliest episodes of Star Trek deals with a beyond-creepy, ear-ringed slaver named Mudd, who basically makes a living in the sale of mail-order brides across the final frontier.

Kirk: “Is this your crew, Captain?”

Mudd: “Well, no, Captain. This is me cargo… I recruit wives for settlers. A difficult but satisfying task.”

Now, most sexism in the modern era seems to revolve around forms of objectification. It would be easy to just accuse this episode of objectifying women—going so far as to make them a commodity up for bid—but the plot also revolves around an unexpected twist. The beauty of these enslaved women is actually an illusion generated by a “Venus drug” given to them by their slaver. You know. To make them more valuable. …Yikes.

So how does the story play out? Do these women refuse to keep taking the drug? Do they triumphantly escape captivity? Do the enslaved sex objects fight back against their master? Well, one of them seems to become dissatisfied with the idea of forced marriage to a miner she’s never met—for a couple of minutes. But in the end, the women are used as bargaining chips for some lithium crystals that Kirk needed—like, really, really badly—and the ladies marry the miners as planned. A real fairytale ending.

6.  Rampant Lust

This one’s not a moment. It’s actually an entire series of moments, ranging from the Enterprise’s crew to alien settlements and even Earth’s distant past.

There seems to be a general trend throughout space and time of women being unable to restrain themselves. No matter how courageous and intelligent they may be, a single look from James T. Kirk can apparently turn every woman, human or otherwise—in this galaxy or any other—into a bleary-eyed, lusty freak.

Believe it or not, this is not even close to the most ridiculous thing to happen in Star Trek.

Time after time, Kirk finds pretense to kiss, caress or eye-grope just about every female being the Enterprise ever encounters. Objectifying women? Bad. But constructing a fantasy where every female is a slave to her impulses, abandoning inhibition at the drop of a hat—or the removal of a shirt: offensive, crude and insulting.

5.  A Warning

Here, we get a glimpse of Kirk’s methods for calmly reasoning with the opposite sex during a disagreement. He and Elaan, an alien princess, are in an argument over her arranged marriage. When she disagrees with him, he decides that the most sensible course of action is to slap her. She responds as follows.

Princess Elaan: “You are warned, Captain, never to touch me again!”

Captain Kirk: “If I touch you again, Your Glory, it’ll be to administer an ancient Earth custom called a spanking!”

4.  Warning Revoked

A couple of minutes after the domestic violence between Princess Elaan and Captain Kirk, they kiss (of course). Apparently, Elaan realizes it was foolish to resist Kirk’s godly sexual prowess, and then this sparkling dialogue ensues:

Elaan: “Captain, that ancient Earth custom called spanking. What is it?”

Kirk: “We’ll… talk about it later.”

3. Season 1, Episode 7: What Are Little Girls Made Of?

In this regrettable adventure, Kirk is sent to rescue a stranded scientist named Dr. Korby, only to discover that he’s gone off the deep end. (That happens sometimes, in deep space.) Korby is in the middle of some nefarious scheme or another and has constructed a couple of human replica androids to assist him in his work, one of whom is named Andrea.

I’m guessing he designed her wardrobe, too.

Not to worry. It’s nothing Captain Kirk’s worlds-spanning charm can’t handle. After one kiss from Kirk, the android—a robot, by definition incapable of love or any human emotion whatsoever— turns into an improbably lusty freak all the same.

Andrea [after a passionate kiss from Kirk]: “No… No… Not programmed for you…!”

Never mind that Andrea is a gender-neutral shell of wires and circuitry. It seems as long as it looks like a woman and talks like a woman, Kirk can turn it into putty in his hands. Indeed, without Kirk’s illogical magnetism to short-circuit this sex machine, he might never have escaped Dr. Pervert’s lair.

2.  Another One-Liner

“If only she could have accepted her limitations as a woman.”

- Captain James Tiberius Kirk

Oooh boy… That one’s hard to even watch.

1.  Season 2, Episode 3: The Changeling

All right. We saved the best for last. Hold on to you space-hats, because as we are about to discover that in the Star Trek universe, even machines are sexist.

When the human-erradicating space probe robot called NOMAD erases and absorbs the mind of Lt. Uhura, it receives an unexpected surprise.

Kirk: “What’d you do to her?”

NOMAD: “That unit is defective. Its thinking is chaotic. Absorbing it unsettled me.”

Spock: “That ‘unit’ is a woman.”

NOMAD: “A mass of conflicting impulses.”

Kirk and Spock then exchange a look with one another as if to say, “No arguments, there, bro.”

Conclusion

Star Trek: The Original Series has been praised not only for its original content and intelligent storytelling, but also as a daring vehicle for social change. The crew on the bridge of the starship Enterprise included a Russian man (at the height of the Cold War), an African American woman (right on the heels of the civil rights movement) and an Asian man (in the middle of the Vietnam War). The show featured the first interracial kiss on television, and some stations in the American south refused to air it.

In the years since, Star Trek has become a cultural phenomenon, inspiring a movie franchise, multiple spinoff series and, more recently, the successful J.J. Abrams reboot. That said, we shouldn’t judge The Original Series too harshly for its sexist moments. To be fair, it was the 60s.  Besides, even the reboot movies have been accused of sexism. Not only do many believe the importance of the reboot’s female characters was downplayed—their roles reduced to simply supporting the white, male leads—but Into Darkness also features an inexplicable and unnecessary scene in which actress Alice Eve strips down to her underwear. Needless to say, these shots were used for just about every trailer, commercial and advertising campaign run for the movie, prompting many to lament that the film (based on a TV show praised for its progressive portrayal of gender roles) would so shamelessly objectify women.  Maybe we haven’t come as far as we think.

While Spock and Kirk can both come off as good-old-boys at times, Star Trek presented the vision of a future where humans of different genders, nationalities and colors worked together peacefully to explore strange, new worlds, seek out new life and new civilizations, and to boldly go where no man (or woman) has gone before.

Read long and prosper!

Why Do Sequels Suck? Comparing and Contrasting the Good, the Bad and the Barftastic

The Best Things In Life

The Fallen Odyssey Soundtrack: Epic Fantasy on Spotify

The Fallen Odyssey Soundtrack: Epic Fantasy On Spotify

Did you know The Fallen Odyssey has a soundtrack?

Now available for your listening pleasure: 40 songs in a free Spotify playlist inspired by The Fallen Odyssey to enhance your reading experience. If you listen to music while you read, these Ambient, Jazz, Metal and Progressive Rock songs will create the perfect atmosphere.

Featuring music by Scale The Summit, Animals As Leaders, Emerson, Lake & Palmer, Mahavishnu Orchestra, Jeff Beck, Shadowfax, Al Di Meola, Planet X, Opeth, Between The Buried And Me, Textures, Chimp Spanner,  Andrew Bird, Bela Fleck & the Flecktones, Acoustic Alchemy, Jean-Luc Ponty, Dixie Dregs, Jaco Pastorius, Weather Report, Camel, Billy Cobham, Bill Bruford, Tony Williams, Journey, Oblivion Sun, Ramsey Lewis and more.

 

Be sure to “Follow” THE FALLEN ODYSSEY playlist. If you haven’t already, grab a copy of The Fallen Odyssey and start your own adventure!

About C.B. McCullough

Take A Picture, Get A Free Book – The Summer Reading Photo Event

Book I: The Fallen Odyssey

Book II: The Fallen Aeneid

Take A Picture, Get A Free Book – The Summer Reading Photo Event

Memorial Day marks the unofficial beginning to the summer vacation season.  For many, that means days spent outdoors, at the ballfields, barbecuing in the backyard, or toiling away on home improvement projects.  But whether summer means you’re soaking up rays or just sitting on the couch in a room slightly brighter than it was a month ago, one thing is certain: summer means books.

Universally, one of the most popular New Year’s resolutions is to read more, and although most resolutions are abandoned by February, there’s still hope!  Summer is the season for books.  Reading lists abound, and there’s nothing quite like relaxing in the sun with a sand-filled paperback on your beach towel or jumping into a new adventure by flashlight under the stars.  That’s why I’m introducing the Summer Reading Photo Contest.  The winning photo will get you a free, signed and personalized copy of my next book.

How To Enter

Take a photo of yourself, reading a title by C.B. McCullough (paperback, Kindle or otherwise), OR take a photo of a book by C.B. McCullough in an interesting place or a unique pose.
Enter your photo by doing one of the following:

Post your photo to Facebook and tag C.B. McCullough or The Fallen Odyssey or The Night Also Rises
Tweet your photo to CBmccwrites
Email your photo



Contest Rules

Contest is open from Memorial Day (May 26th) to Labor Day (September 1st) of 2014
The best or most original photo will be featured here on McCullough Writes
Winner will be contacted upon end of contest for shipping information
Winner will receive a free, signed and personalized copy of the next book by C.B. McCullough upon publication in paperback (or an existing C.B. McCullough title of the winner’s choice)

Good luck and enjoy your summer!  Read long and prosper.

- CB

PS: Don’t have a C.B. McCullough book?  What exactly are you waiting for?  Start a new adventure today!

The Best Things In Life

If it’s true that the best things in life are free, what an inflated view I must have of The Path Less Traveled by giving it to you.

Download The Path Less Traveled (The Fallen Odyssey, Part 1) for $0.00 on your Kindle, or in .epub, PDF, plain text,  or read it online.  Check out the Smashwords page for more download options.  Or, if you’ve got $0.99 burning a hole in your pocket, feel free to buy it on Amazon.

C.B. McCullough – Mercenary Of The Written Word

Hi!

My name is Corey McCullough.  I’m an author, freelance writer, proofreader, editor and former archaeological technician.  I live in Berkeley Springs, West Virginia with my wife and a small menagerie of pets.  When not writing, I can usually be found reading, playing guitar, enjoying the outdoors with friends and family, or binge-watching reruns on Netflix.

Before taking the plunge into full-time writing, I was digging up artifacts and conducting cultural resource surveys for an environmental consulting firm, where I was, more often than not, covered in dirt, mud, and ticks.  As glamorous as that was, I left it all behind to pursue a career in writing.  In addition to self-publishing three novels in the past year (under the pen name C.B. McCullough), I have tackled freelance projects ranging from ghostwriting an older gentleman’s family history/memoirs to editing a local pastor’s self-help/spiritual nonfiction book.  I have also served as a full-time sales writer for an asset management company.

I’m reliable, flexible, easy to work with, and I take my work seriously.  My favorite feeling in the world is completing a project.  Whether constructing an original piece of writing or polishing the words of another, my passion is to deliver, quickly and efficiently, the best product possible.

If you have a project that needs done and think we would be a good fit, I would love to discuss working with you.

Corey (C.B.) McCullough

Freelance editor, proofreader and writer

C.B. McCullough Loves Sequels… Sometimes

C.B. McCullough Loves Sequels… Sometimes

Sequels: the double-edged sword of the film industry.

Like all movie geeks, I love a good sequel, and I hate, hate, hate a bad one.  It’s a pity that such a vast majority of Part 2s fall into that second category.  So what do good sequels do right, where the bad ones go wrong?  Find out, in a guest post by yours truly on one of my new favorite sites, WriterLovesMovies.

Run by freelance film critic Natalie Stendall, Writer Loves Movies brings together film reviews, movie news and trailer talk.  So head on over, have a browse, and join in the chatter.

A special thanks to Natalie – a new writer friend who could not be nicer – for putting together a great site and lending me some space on it for a nerdy rant.

- CB